Do Vampires Fear Aids?

Aids is only an existential threat to Vampires

Vampires
feeding on blood in the divided dark
dark shadows of a bloody night

Vampires feed and the body bleaches
cold and pale in still moonlight
withering and dying in day made night

For all the shadows of darkness
the fear inducing night
mothers must as mothers do
bring calming light
to nightmarish flight

Aids thrives only in darkness
in the shadows of fear we hide
Bring sunlight to your fears!

Sunlight on mental darkness
Sunlight on a great divide

The cure for HIV-AIDS begins in the community. It starts with those who are healthy, not those who are sick. We who are healthy should not - must not - no, must never drive the sick into the darkness of fear and retribution.
That is the beginning of a Great Divide. Sick people are not vampires to be sent back into the Dark. Let them come out into the sunlight, for sunlight on a problem is the first step towards remediation, and the most important one. Anti-retrovirals are the tools, the community is the framework within which it can operate best.

 If you have it, or suspect you do, or know someone who might ~ remind them, remind yourself: there's help, & hope and a life waiting to be lived. Bring it out into the sunlight and away from Dracula's shadow.

the image© is a detail from Blessing Ngobeni's 2018 acrylic and collage on canvas "Everyone is a VIP" ~ an apposite title for this theme.

The Fates: What lessons do the Ancient Greek Sisters have for us today?

The sisters ponder on and weave the tapestry of a life *1 Read from ... Lachesis Chlotho Atropos Conclusion

The Ancients believed the three Fates had roles at the start and ending point of their lives, and at the various crisis points. They were the mistresses of the mother thread in the life everyone, both gods and humans. Is there something to learn from it today? That's the topic of this blog post. Let's kick off with a brief summary of who they were. Looking at the image, we see

• Lachesis (the assigner, sitting at the back) she decided how long you would live for;
• Clotho (the spinner on the right, that's the thread of your life she's pulling on), Clotho spun the story of your life and intervened at critical moments in it; and
• Atropos ( on the left - the 'unturnable', preparing for the moment when she will cut off the thread) she also ensured that you never deviated from your fate.

Each of these women acted independently from the others, i.e. they could not influence each other's actions. No doubt, being women they likely gossiped about our foibles, but at the key points they acted on their own volition. No court of arbitration. No appeals. Dice rolled, wheel of fortune spun, now get on with it. You wish our leaders could act with that sort of firmness and decisiveness!

How might this work then? and what value did people get from the process? Why were they so accepting of it? Let's do a plain language, somewhat allegorical deep dive into it.

Lachesis

She had a rod which she used to calculate the length of your life. Your life would be spun on a spindle, so her measuring rod was used to determine how much thread is allocated to you. Think of it this way ~ every heartbeat is a stitch, and when all the thread is used up, your time has come.

Freedom from the fear of death
You might say that there doesn't seem to be much value in that! Not so. The ancients were very pre-occupied with the reality of death. Life was uncertain, and death or misfortune could strike at any time, from anywhere, without warning or mercy. Much like today, in fact ~ only we put it to the back of our minds. Modern life insulates us from death until it strikes those around us, and then we are overwhelmed by it. Thereafter it haunts us, a silent breathe on the nape of the neck.

Lachesis takes this most primal of fears away: this fear of dying. Since our days have been numbered, down to the last second, they were able to live life fully and without fear. You're going to die when you're going to die, whether you act with cowardice or courage, with honour or deceit, so you're free to live your life to its allotted span. At the end of your days you will be remembered for how you lived, and for nothing else. Your legacy is in your own hands. This is the promise of Religion expressed in a different way: both view death as a portal rather than as an ending. Both offer a means to immortality.

Having done her work she plays no more part in our lives: Easy job. Some goddesses have all the luck! Look at her up there with her chin in her hands, chatting about this or that while the other girls do the hard yards.

Clotho

She has skeins of twine with which to weave your life's story around the mortal thread. Not forgetting a spindle and a needle to do the weaving with.

Imagine it this way. You're living your life, and unbeknownst it's been recorded on a tapestry which can be seen by those who have sight of it - not mortal people, of course! but by those who'll judge you one day and call you to account. We have come to a Big Moment waiting on a Big Decision. Maybe your relationship with your partner has soured. Maybe chance has brought someone new into view, and temptation beckons. What to do? Well, let's see …. hmmmm. Divorce, that's an option. Murder. An Affair (sounds exciting!) Couples Therapy? Maybe do nothing (because doing nothing is a choice with consequences!)

Knowing you (as Clotho does, she's been weaving your life's story since birth!) she knows what you would do in the event of each decision, and so she weaves a different path for each choice: one that you will be fated to follow once you've made up your mind. Beware! The law of unintended consequences always applies. Clotho is also the Goddess of Chance. She (metaphorically speaking) spins a wheel of fortune and let's that influence her weaving. And so Murphy's Law was born . . . . .

Let's think about this for a moment. Your life now comes down to a cycle of issues and events that lead up to a decision point. It's your decision, no one else's. You could get someone else to decide for you, but again that's what you chose. Having made your choice you're committed to follow whatever transpires. Once begun Divorce follows its path. You can't undead your partner once the murder is done (or attempted.) There's a process waiting, with police, judges, jails and who knows what else. The affair, well that could go anywhere! And not all of it to your liking either. Doing nothing will most likely lead to a deepening of a poisonous relationship steadily souring two lives. More if there are children or other dependents in the equation. Maybe couples therapy would've been a good choice after all . . . committed couples therapy, that is.

You live your life, you're confronted with choices, make them and then you're on an irreversible path. Nothing much has changed in 5000 years, has it? To live well you must choose wisely. But wisdom is not given us, it is acquired through our life's choices and reflections: we are iron hoping to be forged into steel in the furnace of life.

Atropos

Atropos has a pair of shears, probably better to think of them as scissors, these days. They never had modern manufacturing plants. The modern Atropos probably dresses like a Goth and has a range of really cool scissors in her hand bag. And hates her parents & siblings (careful dears, those scissors have purpose!)

So what's her role then? Keeping the end in mind, once the length of your thread has run out, she makes sure to cut off any that might somehow have remained. She cuts off the thread and so ends your life's tapestry simultaneously drawing an end to your life.

She has other duties during your life. After her sister has woven the possibilities, Clotho steps away. Atropos waits until you choose and then cuts off the ends of the lives you chose against. These are your ghost lives, shadowy possibilities of might-have-beens irrevocably pruned and composted.

There is no value in the moment of cutting, the value comes later in self-reflection and awareness, if you choose to make it so. 

Wisdom begins here, because as we reflect on the lessons of our choices, and ponder our ghosted lives, so we start on our journey towards it. We come to understand that the Wisdom of our mentors and influencers are their stories partially realised in ours: the contexts of our own lives might differ, but human emotion, honour, morality and ethics and their opposites are eternal. To become wise we take the wisdom of the past and adapt it for the present, and then hand it on to the future.

So what is there to conclude?

That the process the Fates followed are a mirror of our own lives maybe?

How will your tapestry look, laid out at the end of days?

All your struggles and choices laid bare:
a legacy built from the ugliest clay in a life well lived,
or one torn down from a golden plinth?

We know and understand so much more, yet still our lives are woven under the influence of random chance and in the midst of mindless chaos, and here's the only difference between then and now: The Ancients had an external force to blame for how their lives unfolded. We can own our lives.

*1: Public domain image sourced from Wikimedia Commons

I don't live to assuage the guilt of the dead

In the moment of change
its not for the last
nor for the least
not for the next
or even an act of contrition
or a longing for redemption.

sourced from what I know
and've learned about myself.
insight,
absent of guilt, 
in a moment of realisation 
brings a dawning awakening light

knowing how it ripples
as tiny droplets do
rippling across my memories
each ripple washing a neighbour
in waves moving over and on. 
each drop is driving a difference
a necessary needed difference
steering in some small measure
an outlook and new perception.

another droplet will fall
fashioned in its moment to be
another and then another
driving the changing me.

this is no river of tears
it carries no retribution
the past is not assuaged
no garden of Eden intention.

this change is a gift to my future
and a possible gift to yours

All images copyright (c) the author

At the first turning of the second stair

At the first turning of the second stair

I saw you on that evening long ago

And Hope and Love awoke and rose and grew –

Now in this uncertain hour before the rising dawn

I mourn your loss.

Alive in the scented gardens of the mind

Your memory will remain

Moonlight in the darkest night

Sunlight on a cold and misty day.

Russian Wedding Rings and the meaning of Love

This is a story that my mother told me when I was a very little boy, a story that mothers weave for their children. The symbolism of the 3 gold bands resonates across the years. At the end are some links you might find handy.

My father used to manage small hotels in the Free State when I was a little boy.
It was not common for people to stay there for any length of time, people just passed through going from one place to another: overnighting for at most a night or two.
Mostly they were travelling salesman, or people migrating from the big city to the coast, or vice versa.

I remember one couple very clearly, though. They were foreigners, and spoke in a rather strange tongue. And although she was a remarkably beautiful woman (I could see that, even though I was a very young boy) it was the strange ring that she had on her wedding finger that struck me the most.
It was actually 3 interlocking rings, a sort of a puzzle ring, and each ring a different colour of gold.
I asked my mother what it was. She told me it was a Russian wedding ring. "Oh", I said. "What's that?"
Well, in those far-off days, mothers never had the Internet to go to, and trekking off to the library to look things up in the Encyclopaedia was not going to answer the question for a persistent little boy!

So she did the next best thing, which was to tell me a story.
Years later, I looked up Russian wedding rings on the Internet. I learnt that the Russian wedding ring is a Christian symbol, representing the holy Trinity. And while that is true, I still prefer my mother's story. Here it is, maybe you will enjoy it too.

My mother's story

She told me that marriage was about two people who loved each other.
She told me that the ring was a symbol of this love, as all wedding rings are.
But, she told me, this ring brought together the three most important things of a loving relationship.

The white gold ring, she told me, is softer than the other golds. Being softer, it will take the shape of the finger. "Love is like that", she said. "In the journey through life, two people in love have to change their shape. They have to give some things up, and take other things on. To become a family each one has to move towards the other". So that's what the white gold represents: bending towards each other.

Yellow gold, on the other hand, is very hard. You can bump it and knock it, and afterwards, all you had to do is to give it a hard rub, and there it would be: all bright and shining again. "Life is like that" she said. "It's not easy. Sometimes things are really difficult. Then you have to support each other. Sometimes love has to be hard". So this is what the Yellow Gold represents: the strength to get through life, and then come out on the other side all bright and shiny and new.

Then she was silent for a time. So I asked her "what about the red gold mommy?"

It took her a moment before she answered.
"Have you ever seen red gold before?" she asked softly.
"No", I replied.
"Well," she said, "Red Gold is rare". "And love", she said "is just as rare. When you find it, when you finally have it, you must look after it. You have to protect it. If you lose it it might never come back to you again". And that is what the Red Gold represents: that Love must be cherished, because life is short and every moment spent without love is a moment lost forever.

Related links

Origins of the wedding ring	This site was built to search out and explain the history of the wedding ring. You will find information on the evolution of the wedding ring and its history through the Christian faith.
Professionally researched answer from the AnswerBag	Reviews the various kinds of three-ring wedding bands
A brief history of the wedding ring	An article from the blog "Sex, Love, and Marriage"
Russian Wedding Customs	From Wikipedia
Symbolism Of Wedding Rings	A nice little article on the symbolism of wedding rings in general-ignore the Russian cyber brides!
Russian Weddings	The full paraphernalia, courtesy Wikipedia
Traditional Wedding Rings	A history of some of the most popular traditional wedding rings, courtesy the Wedding Channel
Wedding Ring Traditions Around the World	From Ancient Egyptian Culture to Modern Irish Claddagh Rings, courtesy Suite101
On Russian Wedding Traditions of the Past	Some background on wedding traditions and rituals in old Russia

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